Saturday, March 17, 2007

MOST Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll published today. The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.

... when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today. ...

Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said the findings pointed to progress. “There is no widespread violence in the four southern provinces and the fact that the picture is more complex than the stereotype usually portrayed is reflected in today’s poll,” she said.

THE MOST NEGATIVE AND PESSIMISTIC PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE WORLD ABOUT IRAQ ARE THE DEMOCRATS.

Patients lie naked, half washed and forgotten, their sick and ageing flesh exposed to everyone, while nurses rush elsewhere. It is commonplace to have to walk to filthy mixed lavatories with gowns wide open at the back. At a time of sickness and anxiety many people are profoundly embarrassed to be surrounded by a clutter of bed pans, colostomy bags, nakedness, cries of pain and sweat, blood and tears — their own and other people’s. [...]

The late Eileen Fahey, for instance, dying of cancer, was put onto a mixed geriatric ward where confused people wandered about without supervision. One man with dementia regularly masturbated at the nurses’ station and tried to get into women patients’ beds; he was a threat to them all but staff took no notice, according to her daughter Maureen. Other patients have to give answers to intimate questions in the hearing of other patients. One deaf old man was repeatedly asked when he last had an erection, until tears ran down his cheeks.

A former midwife described eloquently on Radio 4 the indignities of being in a 24-bed mixed-sex ward, stripped of all dignity and intimidated. Bedlam was the word she used, and it applies even more accurately to the secure psychiatric mixed ward in London endured by Susan Craig last year, after a breakdown. She suffered regular sexual harassment, with mentally ill men groping her and exposing themselves. The nurses disbelieved her and told her husband she was “flaunting herself”.

... mixed-sex wards are not the worst of NHS hospitals’ problems, although they demonstrate them. They demonstrate the incompetence and deviousness of hospital management in general, and they also show something worse. In all the stories I’ve come across what stands out is the ignorance, incompetence, laziness and heartlessness of all too many nurses, who are allowed to neglect and insult their patients without supervision and without sanction — in single-sex wards just as much as mixed.

THIS IS WHAT HILLARY AND HER DEMOCRAT COMRADES WANT TO DO TO OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.

OF COURSE, HILLARY AND HER COMRADES WILL NEVER HAVE TO SUFFER LIKE THE REST OF US UNDER A NATIONALIZED HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.

JUST LIKE AL GORE, WHO LIVES HIGH ON THE CARBON-HOG WHILE DEMANDING THE REST OF US TIGHTEN OUR CARBON-BELTS - HILLARY WILL PROBABLY TAKE A PRIVATE JET TO THE MAYO CLINIC WHEN SHE GETS REALLY SICK.

DON'T BELIEVE ME!? REMEMBER: THE CLINTON'S AND THE GORE'S - BIG ALLIES OF THEIR COMRADES IN THE NEA, AND BIG OPPONENTS OF SCHOOL VOUCHERS - SENT THEIR KIDS TO PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

France ranks 22nd among European Union states for the percentage of women in its parliament -- at just over 12 percent. In a worldwide comparison, France is listed as 87th -- below Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates, where the percentage of women in parliament is nearly double that of France, according to statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

SACRE BLEU! This is good news for two reasons: first, apparently it is hurting the presidential hopes of socialist Segolene Royal; and second, it proves once again that the image most American Lefties have of France (and Europe in general) - that it's much better and more progressive than the USA - is completely FALSE.

ASIDE: Frankly - and I lived there for a few months while getting my MA - Paris is a gorgeous city, but EVERYTHING great and beautiful about Paris is 19th Century, (and the best of that century is Second Empire, an era which modern and postmodern Frenchmen hate!).

Since the 20th Century - (beginning after WW1), France has been second rate. Without the UNSC veto (given to them by mistake after WW2), France would have been no more important in world affairs than Belgium. Perhaps - in 75 years, when France is a Muslim nation like Turkey - the history of France will be summarized as follows:

France fell to socialism and postmodernism after WW1, and then fell in deeper despair to Nazism during WW2, and then managed only to climb back up to socialism and postmodernism during the Cold War. France finally completely succumbed to Mohammedanism in the early 21st Century.

Pity. If Sarkozy wins and institutes some Reaganesque, Hayekian and Thatcher-like reforms then perhaps France will survive? I hope so.

The sale of indulgences [link added] for those who emit so-called greenhouse gases is built on widespread fraud. The illusion of "carbon neutrality" is very often nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Business Week, hardly a conservative source, has investigated a number of these schemes and found widespread questionable practices. [Umph added.]

... Nobody is reducing any CO2 emissions as a result of money changing hands. Common sense tells anyone that if you think it is a bad thing to generate carbon dioxide, you should curtail your activities that do so. Anything else is morally fraudulent.

Many people are getting rich selling this fraudulent crap. What they're really selling is merely a boost to the vanity of the purchaser - or their PC PR.

The reputed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States has also said that al-Qaida planned to crash planes into the southern resort city of Eilat using aircraft departing from Saudi Arabia. [...]

Mohemmed also said the organization planned to dispatch militants to conduct surveillance on several strategic targets in Israel. [...]

The targets also include many Israeli interests throughout the world, and included the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya that killed 18 as well as the near-simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Arkia charger flight.

As I said before, KSM should recieve the death sentence for his evil deeds and plots.

Norway recognized the new Palestinian government just minutes after it was approved Saturday, and said it would normalize relations with the Hamas-Fatah coalition.

"Norway welcomes the formation of the Palestinian unity government," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said in a statement, adding the coalition was "taking important steps towards complying with the international community's demands."

"Norway will thus on this basis re-establish political and economic relations with the Palestinian government," he said.

Norway is not a member of the European Union, but is a key player in Middle East peacemaking and one of the most steadfast contributors to the Palestinian Authority. Secret negotiations in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, led to a historic Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in 1993.

If they're really not members of the EU, that's a bit surprising. But of course that doesn't make them any less a problem than they are. Next to Britain, they may have the worst politicians in Europe.

Israel's controversial entry for this year's Eurovision has been approved by organisers despite apparent references to Iran's nuclear programme.Push The Button by the group Teapacks was deemed "generally appropriate", said Eurovision spokesman Kjell Ekholm.

Two weeks ago, Mr Ekholm said the song, which refers to "demonic" rulers and "he's gonna blow us up to... kingdom come" could be banned.

Teapacks deny the song is about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Contest supervisor Svante Stockselius said they do not comment on individual cases, "but a couple of songs caused some discussions".

I realize that Eurovision's got rules that object to politicized songs (or do they?), but I think a song like this, if it does attack the Iranian tyrant, should be allowed into the contest because we can't allow the tyrant to think he can escape the condemnation he deserves, even in showbiz!

The sad thing though, is that it's likely that the judges, likely leftists they may be, will snub the song and not give it any awards.

... human activities have very little effect on the climate, compared to many other factors, from volcanoes to clouds. These climate scientists likewise debunk mathematical models used to hype global warming though hard evidence stretching back over centuries contradicts these models.

... No one denies that temperatures are about a degree warmer than a century ago. What the climate scientists in the British documentary deny is that you can mindlessly extrapolate that, or that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don't take drastic steps that could cause an economic catastrophe. "Global warming" is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.

1) The Ask The Imam Show - for some inexplicable reason the Imam segues directly from a nuanced theological discussion of Wudhu - the Islamic purification ritual - directly into an admonishment about the dangers of passing gas during the course of Wudhu. Somehow, the two subjects seem linked in the Imam's mind. Hear what happens when I try to get the Imam to make sense.

2) Interview with Christian writer John McTernan, author of the astonihing book As America Has Done To Israel. Mr. McTernan discusses Bible Prophecy and the punishments that will befall those who curse the Jews.

3) Interview with Horst Schweinhaxe of the Council of American-Nazi Relations (CANR). Horst discusses the oppressive and racist treatment his six Nazi friends received when they visited the Holocaust Museum.

The MSM likes to call McCain a maverick. But this is BS. McCain always bucks the conservatives if the anti-conservative position leads in the MSM and/or polls. McCain is a dangerous panderer. THERE IS ONE EXCEPTION his CONSTANT call for "MORE TROOPS ON THE GROUND!" McCain was relentlessly calling for MORE TROOPS ON THE GROUND during the Kosovo Air Campaign. Which worked - and worked WITHOUT ANY TROOPS ON THE GROUND. "More ground troops" is NOT always the answer, but it's all we ever here from McCain.

McCain is too conservative for liberals and too liberal for conservatives. His mix of positions alienates BOTH IMPORTANT wings of each major party. He cannot win the GOP niod and would NOT win a general election. Besides: he is too old, and has had recurrent cancer.

Rudy is also a liberal hawk, but his extraordinary leadership of NYC - well before 9/11, when the city was dying from crime, taxation, anomie, etc. - makes him a credible war-time president.

Mitt has taken ALL the right positions, and is a proven leader with extraordinary management skills - but they are skills which have not been burnished in the cauldron of intense public scrutiny and constant antipathetic if not belligerent MSM harassment, (as was the case with Rudy). He hasn't yet shown me he has the gravitas of a war-time leader. He must confront this issue. It is more important to me than his sectarian beliefs.

A true conservative with the gravitas to lead a nation at war might still enter the race for the GOP nod - and WIN. Maybe FRIST. (Maybe Jeb is things turnaround in an obvious and undeniable way.) Maybe Ridge.

Right now, I prefer a Rudy-Mitt ticket. Or Mitt-Rudy.

And I worry that an early poor showing by McCain might entice him to run as a third party candidate. AND MAKE Hillary or Obama president.

Two leading UK climate researchers have criticised those among their peers who they say are "overplaying" the global warming message. Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, are voicing their concern at a conference in Oxford. They say some researchers make claims about possible future impacts that cannot be justified by the science.

The pair believe this damages the credibility of all climate scientists. ... "There's no evidence to show we're all due for very short-term devastating impacts as a result of global warming; so I think these statements can be dangerous where you mix in the science with unscientific assumptions."

THIS IS THE GLASNOST & PERESTROIKA MOMENT OF THE AGW MOVEMENT: THE BEGINNING OF THE END! HURRAY!

The latest IPCC report which reduces expected sea-level rise from feet to inches has got the Greenies rattled. Wretchard has some comments below (excerpts) on the rather amazing retreat from reality by a prominent global warmer -- who says that Greenies must trade "normal" truth for influence. It is a pretty good admission that global warming is not true in any normal sense.

The "precautionary principle" he invokes is in any case a philosophically silly detour. What do we take precautions against? A new ice age? One of those is geologically overdue. So you get straight back to a need to evaluate the evidence. What we do would be the opposite if we thought that a new ice age were more probable -- which it is.

Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, argues in the Guardian that while scientific evidence may cast doubt on Global Warming why believe science? When a larger truth must be expressed, then "post-normal" science must be employed.

Hulme argues that Global Warming is so important that everyone must act to stop it, whether or not it is scientifically known to exist.

It is an argument superficially similar in structure to Pascal's Wager, which is an expected value argument for the existence of God.

But any resemblance between Pascal and Hulme ends there. While Pascal's Wager describes an approach to problems which are in principle unknowable to science because they are unobservable, at least with present methods, Hulme on the other hand, exiles phenomena which are entirely observable and which ought to be primarily in the domain of science to the realm of political activism.... In declaring himself free of the traditional scientific burden of proof Hulme finally abandons any pretense to authority. He has no rigorous way to tell us what is going to happen next.

I am a great admirer of the Jewish people and, as far back as I can remember I have always been a cast-iron supporter of the State of Israel. What I find hard to understand, however, is how a people who are in general so smart, can overwhelmingly be simpletons in politics. At least since the beginning of Zionism in the 19th century right up until today, Jews have been overwhelmingly Leftist. From memory, about 80% of Jews voted Democrat in the 2004 Presidential election. Jewish alienation is probably the explanation. Dissatisfaction with the world around you IS Leftism and Jews do have reasons to be very dissatisfied with the world in which they find themselves.

As I mentioned, even Zionism was originally very Leftist -- which is why the kibbutzim were the longest-running experiment in Communism -- an experiment that has only recently been abandoned. That Zionism could have been far-Leftist might seem surprising to some today but Leftists were commonly very nationalist up until WW2 -- though you would never believe it from listening to today's Leftists. And to this day, leading Leftist intellectuals -- such as Noam Chomsky -- are Jewish and the many Jews in the U.S. Congress are also almost all Democrats. So I want to say a few words now about one particular achievement of that subset of Jews who are Leftist.

Leftism is usually destructive (to tear down is, after all, its first aim) in one way or another and Jewish Leftism is no exception. It is most incorrect to mention it, but, at risk of being "insensitive", I am now going to mention it: It was Marxist Jews who antagonized Hitler. Hitler started out with the view that antisemitism was ignorant so there is a need to explain what changed his mind. What he says in Mein Kampf is that in Linz -- where he grew up -- there were few Jews and he saw them at that time as no different from other Germans. So when he moved to Vienna he was horrified at the antisemitism of much of the Viennese press. As he says:

"For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation".

The conventional explanation is that it was rejection by the Jewish-led Vienna Art Academy that changed his mind. But I know of no good justification for that explanation. It is an explanation of convenience only. Mein Kampf may be unreliable as objective history but there is no reason to doubt that it is good subjective history -- i.e. it records how Hitler saw things. And in Mein Kampf he does not even mention the word "Jew" in connection with the Academy. He says that the Rector rejected him from the painting school because his main talent and interest was in architecture -- a judgement with which Hitler himself emphatically agreed! So what DID antagonize him?

Long before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Hitler had despised the destructive and divisive side of Marxism and when he found that practically every preacher of Marxist class-emnity that he encountered in Vienna was a Jew, he began to see Jews as bent on the destruction of the German people he loved. In other words, for him it was the strong association of Jews with Marxist hate that led to his generalized horror of all Jews. He in fact describes his conversion to antisemitism as "a great spiritual upheaval" -- i.e. he abandoned his previous "cosmopolitan" (tolerant) views only with great reluctance.

Whatever else he was, Hitler was a fervent German nationalist and the great love affair of his life was a love-affair with the German people (Volk) as he saw them. But in the aftermath of WWI, Germans were furiously divided among themselves and apparently on the verge of class-war. That grieved Hitler deeply and to salvage his romantic view of his Volk he had to attribute the divisions among Germans to outside forces deceiving them rather than as something intrinsic to Germans themselves. And since the active preachers of class war at the time were often Jews, the scapegoat was obvious. So it was Hitler's nationalist passion combined with the reality of Marxist Jewish hate-preaching that transformed him into an active antisemite.

So Jewish far-Leftists did all Jews a great good turn there, didn't they?

And something very similar happened in Britain. It is sometimes forgotten that Britain too had a considerable Fascist movement in the interwar period. And the leader of the British Union of Fascists -- Sir Oswald Mosley -- was a person of some consequence. The King even came to his wedding! And, like Hitler, Mosley started out seeing antisemitism as ignorant. In the early days he would even expel from the BUF anybody who made antisemitic utterances. But after his street meetings had come under constant attack from far-Leftist Jewish demonstrators, he began to think that Hitler had a point. So again, Jewish Leftists converted a friend of Jews into an enemy. Dreamers and simpletons might like to contend that Hitler was somehow ALWAYS an antisemite but it is very clear that Mosley was not.

The only reliable friends Israel has in the world today are American conservatives and Christians. Will the totally unappreciative attitude of most Jews towards those groups convert a friend into an enemy too? Will the consistent attacks by the ADL on Christian expression in the public square eventually alienate Christians? I fervently hope not but Leftist Jews are not helping the cause at all. With Muslims and the Left now heavily antisemitic, I think that the opposition by Leftist Jews to their only remaining friends almost indicates a death-wish. One can only hope that the many conservative Jews -- such as Jeff Jacoby and Dennis Prager -- who very wisely give every support to Christians will be the voices that Christians mostly hear. Surely nobody with any grasp of history needs to be told that Christian antagonism to Jews is possible!

I imagine that any Leftist Jew reading this will immediately put all their defence mechanisms into overdrive but a distinguished Jewish psychiatrist -- Sigmund Freud -- long ago pointed out that defence meachanisms are pathological and self-destructive so I do hope that denial will give way to an honest contemplation of reality in at least some cases.

A Jewish reader has written to me saying that Jews who work against the interests of Jews generally should not be regarded as Jews. So humans who work against the interests of humans generally (as Greenies, Leftists and criminals normally do) should not be regarded as human beings? I think not. The reader does have a good academic point however: I have not defined what I mean by "Jewish". As the matter is a very contentious one, I am not big on definitions of "Jewish" but I think that for most purposes the definition offered in the law of the return is sufficient: A Jew is someone who regards himself as a Jew. I would add to that, however, that someone from a clearly Jewish family (e.g. a family committed to halacha) should also be regarded as a Jew, no matter how he regards himself -- which is part of the reason why we have the common expression: "Non-observant Jew".

The same writer implied that I was proposing discrimination against Leftist Jews. Much though I loathe Jews who undermine Israel, nobody will ever find a single word that I have written which proposes discrimination against Jews of any sort. I think the only way one can deal with Jewish Leftism is the way one has to deal with Leftism generally -- through reason, facts and persuasion.

Note also that I am NOT saying that Leftist Jews are responsible for the holocaust. Hitler was. But it serves us very ill if we fail to look into his motivations.

Update 2

I have come across some figures on American Jewish political allegiances:

The 2006 midterm elections confirmed once again a truism of American politics: American Jews remain overwhelmingly devoted to the Democratic party. According to exit polling, the tilt this year was, if anything, even more pronounced than it has been in the past. Some 88 percent of Jewish votes went to Democratic candidates, while a mere 12 percent went to the GOP.

Along with this lopsided outcome, a historical extreme, comes the news that the number of Jewish representatives in Congress has itself reached an all-time high. Although Jews represent a marginal sliver—a mere 2 percent—of the U.S. population, they now hold 13 seats in the U.S. Senate, all but two of them—Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of Minnesota—Democratic. (Bernard Sanders of Vermont, elected as an independent, has pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus.) In the House of Representatives, Jews, all but one of them Democrats, now occupy 30 seats.

***********************

HOWEVER

Pelosi hears boos at AIPAC "Members of the main pro-Israel lobbying group offered scattered boos to a statement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the Iraq war has been a failure on several scores. The boos, mixed with some polite applause, stood in stark contrast to the reception House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) received minutes earlier. Most of the crowd of 5,000 to 6,000 stood and loudly applauded Boehner when he said the U.S. had no choice but to win in Iraq. Pelosi and Boehner were speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual meeting. AIPAC has not taken a position on the war in Iraq or the supplemental spending bill to be considered this week by the House Appropriations Committee, but much of Boehner's speech was about the future of the Iraq conflict. Boehner sought to link the fight in Iraq to the future of Israel, as he said a failure in Iraq would pose a direct threat to Israel"

Friday, March 16, 2007

Well, let's see, the UK is under heavy threat from a certain source right now. What is that source called? Jeez, I can't seem to remember the name. I know it starts with an I, and I can see the picture of the leader in my mind's eye. You know the guy. That guy with the bomb in his turban.

Have you ever wondered what our children are taught in our schools, well here is the DES requirements for every school in the UK regarding Islam, please note these are called "key stages" and as such are not optional, the child must be taught these stages, there is no opt out, now read on............RE at key stages 1 and 2 (Year 5)Unit 5B: How do Muslims express their beliefs through practices?Section 1: Introducing the Qur'an

Objectives Children should learn:

the significance of the Qur'an for Muslims

Activities Outcomes Children:

* What special things do you treat with respect in your home or in your school?

Ask the children to think about items of great value, financial or sentimental; things that are fragile; things that are special to other people. * Show the children a Qur'an stand. Discuss how it might be used and by whom.

Place a copy of the Qur'an on the stand and explain why it is so special. Discuss rituals associated with using the Qur'an. How do we treat things we respect? Where do we keep them? How would we feel if they were soiled or damaged? Ask the children to wash and dry their hands, and then discuss how they felt before and after they did so. * Ask the children to design a leaflet explaining the purpose of Wudu. * recognise that the name for God in Islam is Allah * identify the Qur'an as the Muslim holy book * explain the purpose of Wudu

Yep, you gotta admit it is important that little English schoolchildren should familiarize themselves with the ideology of their enemy. It's a good thing the British government is on the case and making sure their people know the truth and are protected from those who would kill them. A government like that really earns the respect and trust of its people.

ASIDE: These results prove that if people hear BOTH sides of the debate, then they come away realizing that AGW is BS and that Gore is an hysterical demagoguing assh*le!

ADDENDUM: This explains why the Left hates FOX NEWS - since FOX is the ONLY newschannel that gives BOTH sides of an issue, it guarantees that viewers will have their eyes opened, and the Left can't SURVIVE that - and they know it!!

For some time now I have wanted a custom icon for my browser tab. It is really simple to make one. Here is how to do it for Blogger blogs.

Make a picture with your digital camera or scanner and save it as a .jpg on your hard drive. Go to FavIcon from Pics and hit the Browse button to get your saved image from the directory you saved it in. Then hit Generate FavIcon.ico button. It will ask you where you want to save the .zip file. Save it. Go to the directory the .zip file was saved and right click on the file and do an Extract All... You will have a file called Favico its extension is .ico You can change the name of the file if you like. Post this file as a web page. I use My Web Page by Netscape. Once the file has a url, save the url some place useful like a text file. Then go to your blogger editing tools and click on Template. Then click on Edit HTML Look for the tag <head> - Right below that tag add the following HTML

The Hildabeest recently said: "If anybody tells you there is no vast right-wing conspiracy, tell them that New Hampshire has proven it in court. We have the -- we have the facts, and we're going to make that a crime"

She was apparently referring to convictions of three Republican Party members in New Hampshire for phone jamming during the 2002 Federal election. But do minor criminal acts by three individual party members (none of whom were candidates for public elective office) constitute a "vast right-wing conspiracy"? She sure has a funny definition of "vast"!

Hannity has called what she said "hate speech" -- and stigmatizing a large group of people as the result of misdeeds by a few would seem to be just the sort of thing that IS normally called hate-speech. But only conservatives and Christians can be guilty of hate-speech, as we know.

And WHAT is it that she is going to make a crime? What the three GOPers did is already a proven crime so that cannot be it. Is any "conspiracy" among conservatives to be a crime? It seems so. But how do you define conspiracy? At law, any two people acting together can be a conspiracy. And the Hildabeest has pointed to actions by just three people as an example of what she means. So are all agreements by three or more conservatives to take any form of combined action to be outlawed? That sure sounds like heaven for Democrats! It seems that she was both uttering hate speech herself and proposing Draconian restrictions on free speech.

The Leftist Media Matters has the details and does its best to put an acceptable face on the incident. They don't go anywhere near that word "vast", though. I would have thought that "minor" would be the most accurate adjective.

Two myths that I want to revisit today are the myth that Pope Pius XII was a Nazi collaborator and that Fascism was antisemitic. As a libertarian, I have no time whatsoever for Fascism but it is so grossly misrepresented that I think the untruths have a serious potential to mislead.

In the prewar period, there were Fascist movements in most countries and, largely because they were nationalist movements, there were great national differences between them. Under Hitler's influence, the German version was horribly antisemitic but that was not true of most other versions. In Mussolini's Italy, for instance, Jews were prominent members of the Fascist party in the prewar period and during the war Italy was about the safest place in Europe for Jews to be! Italy rescued most of its Jews during the period of Nazi control there late in the war. And in Britain of the early interwar era, Sir Oswald Mosley used to expel from the British Union of Fascists anybody who made antisemitic speeches. Antisemitism was very common in the interwar era so early in that era the British party which most opposed antisemitism was in fact Mosley's BUF! Pesky! When his meetings came under constant attack from Jewish Leftists, however, Mosley eventually had something of a rethink.

And concerning Pacelli (Pius XII), the true tale of his great efforts to rescue Jews has now long been told but it is still the old Soviet propaganda about him being a Nazi collaborator that lives on in the public consciousness. Like so many myths, what is popularly believed is the reverse of the truth. Pius was simply being a good Italian in failing to see anything wrong with the Jews and doing his best to save them. Although Italy fumbled about on the wrong side of WW2, Italians have nonetheless much to be proud of concerning their treatment of Jews at that time. Extensive data on that in the books below:

And what does all that prove? It shows what conservatives have always said: That reality is a heck of a lot more complex and surprising than the simple generalizations that constitute Leftism.

I have been having an ongoing discussion at Jane Galt about climate change. The discussion has been wide ranging, but what I want to focus on is the input data for the climate models and some of the problems with the models themselves.

I'm going to reprise my remarks here with block quotes. Block quotes in italics will be saved for other commenters. Revised and extended of course.

So let us look at the temperature record and how much reliance we should place on the data:

Temperature measurement instruments are not well enough calibrated to measure a 1 deg F signal over a 100 year span. A really expensive and well calibrated instrument re-calibrated weekly could probably measure down to the .1 deg F level in the field. If you have an above average instrument calibrated yearly you might get 1 deg F. Now try extrapolating that back to the days of glass thermomometers and humans reading the numbers.

And you want to tell me that within that error band you can find a 1 deg. F (.6 deg. C) signal (temp rise over the last 100 years)?

Oh yeah. Moving the measuring site 30 ft could easily cause as much as 1 deg F difference due to micro climate. Would you care to bet on how many measuring stations have moved 30 ft in the last 100 years? Would you want to make a trillion dollar bet?

OK. We are all libertarians here. When do I get my share of the really good hemp?

I never got offered the hemp. Just as well. :-)

I'm an electronics engineer by trade. I worked in aerospace which is one step below rocket science. Let me add that my aerospace specialty was instrumentation and control. So it is quite possible that I actually know something about the problems of measurement and control.

Another set herself on fire because her brothers would not let her marry, preferring that she remain their servant at home.

Yet another told her mother before she died that her husband beat her daily.

Testimony gathered by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission documents how life for many Afghan women remains so bleak that some choose a horrific and painful death instead.

The group interviewed about 800 Afghans whose sisters, daughters and daughters-in-law have killed themselves by self-immolation to escape domestic abuse, forced marriage and other misogynistic social customs.

The report and anecdotal evidence from other rights workers suggests the phenomenon is growing, with desperate women sometimes mimicking what they have seen reported on TV."It's really a big problem in Afghanistan," said Nabila Wafiq, who has researched the issue for the aid group Medica Mondiale, which has interviewed women who survived their self-immolation attempts.

THERE'S MORE...

THIS IS NOT AN AFGHAN OR INTRA-CULTURAL PROBLEM WHICH WE CAN IGNORE. THESE WOMEN ARE HAVING THEIR UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS TRAMPLED ON BY THEIR OWN FAMILIES - IN THE NAME OF ISLAM.

UNTIL ISLAM GETS RID OF ITS MISOGYNY, THE WEST WILL BE ATTACKED BY JIHADOTERROR - BECAUSE A CULTURE WHICH INCULCATES MISOGYNISM TO THE POINT OF ALLOWING TERROR ON ITS OWN DAUGHTERS AND WIVES, WILL OF COURSE TOLERATE OR EVEN DEMAND TERROR AGAINST INFIDELS.

IT IS TIME WE ACTED TO END THIS BARBARISM. ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME.

TO SAVE WOMEN FROM THE SYSTEMIC HORRORS WHICH DRIVE THEM TO SELF-IMMOLATION, AND TO SAVE OURSELVES FROM THE ISLAMIC MEN WHO TEACH THIS MISOGYNY TO THEIR SONS, WE MUST TAKE BOLD ACTIONS.

WE NEED ANOTHER WILBERFORCE - ONE WHO WILL SPEARHEAD AN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT TO ABOLISH ISLAMO-MISOGYNY.

(PERHAPS AYAAN ALI HIRSI OR WAFA SULTAN WILL EMERGE AS THIS ERA'S FREDERICK DOUGLAS, CHAMPIONING THE RIGHTS OF ISLAMIC WOMEN AND HELPING TO TEAR DOWN THE FILTHY IDEOLOGY WHICH ENSLAVES THEM, AND TERRORIZES THEM, AND DRIVES THEM TO COMMIT SUICIDE.)

Yesterday I had the occasion to show some of the problems with an egregious example of the Left's prevailing view that victims of crime should not resist, but give in and appease the criminals who victimize them.

I should have mentioned the famous essay "A Nation of Cowards," which Jeffrey R. Synder published in The Public Interest in 1993. Fortunately, although The Public Interest ceased publication in 2005, Mr. Snyder's article has been widely reproduced on the worldwide web, and you can find it here, here, or here. You can buy a book-length version (Accurate Press, 2001) online, too. It is well worth reading, saving, and sharing with your friends and loved ones.

I have no intention of reproducing extensive excerpts here, but there are a few short paragraphs that are too good to pass up. Contrast this with the sniveling, fearful coward I linked to yesterday, who advocates giving up all your property to criminals because "that's what insurance is for:"

How can a person who values himself so highly calmly accept the indignity of a criminal assault? How can one who believes that the essence of his dignity lies in his self-determination passively accept the forcible deprivation of that self-determination? How can he, quietly, with great dignity and poise, simply hand over the goods?

The assumption, of course, is that there is no inconsistency. The advice not to resist a criminal assault and simply hand over the goods is founded on the notion that one's life is of incalculable value, and that no amount of property is worth it. Put aside, for a moment, the outrageousness of the suggestion that a criminal who proffers lethal violence should be treated as if he has instituted a new social contract: "I will not hurt or kill you if you give me what I want." For years, feminists have labored to educate people that rape is not about sex, but about domination, degradation, and control. Evidently, someone needs to inform the law enforcement establishment and the media that kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and assault are not about property.

Crime is not only a complete disavowal of the social contract, but also a commandeering of the victim's person and liberty. If the individual's dignity lies in the fact that he is a moral agent engaging in actions of his own will, in free exchange with others, then crime always violates the victim's dignity. It is, in fact, an act of enslavement. Your wallet, your purse, or your car may not be worth your life, but your dignity is; and if it is not worth fighting for, it can hardly be said to exist.

There's more wisdom here:

Should you ever be the victim of an assault, a robbery, or a rape, you will find it very difficult to call the police while the act is in progress, even if you are carrying a portable cellular phone. Nevertheless, you might be interested to know how long it takes them to show up. Department of Justice statistics for 1991 show that, for all crimes of violence, only 28 percent of calls are responded to within five minutes. The idea that protection is a service people can call to have delivered and expect to receive in a timely fashion is often mocked by gun owners, who love to recite the challenge, "Call for a cop, call for an ambulance, and call for a pizza. See who shows up first."

Many people deal with the problem of crime by convincing themselves that they live, work, and travel only in special "crime-free" zones. Invariably, they react with shock and hurt surprise when they discover that criminals do not play by the rules and do not respect these imaginary boundaries. If, however, you understand that crime can occur anywhere at anytime, and if you understand that you can be maimed or mortally wounded in mere seconds, you may wish to consider whether you are willing to place the responsibility for safeguarding your life in the hands of others.

And here:

One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.

Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone -- the handgun. Small and light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly is the "great equalizer." Requiring only hand-eye coordination and a modicum of ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used effectively by the old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the one against the many.

The handgun is the only weapon that would give a lone female jogger a chance of prevailing against a gang of thugs intent on rape, a teacher a chance of protecting children at recess from a madman intent on massacring them, a family of tourists waiting at a mid-town subway station the means to protect themselves from a gang of teens armed with razors and knives.

Take the time to go to one of the sites linked, above, and Read. The. Whole. Thing.

The Left says that burning oil has dramatically increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and that this is causing global temperatures to rise.

THIS IS FALSE, TOO. Most CO2 is natural - it comes from plants, trees and the ocean; human contribution is relatively small, and ice cores prove that CO2 is a lagging indicator of global-warming and NOT the cause; it lags by 800 years over the last million. (Watch THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE for evidence. WTWT!)

THE LEFT TELLS BARRELS OF LIES ABOUT OIL AND GLOBAL WARMING BECAUSE THEY SEE IT AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO INFLICT THEIR AGE-OLD POLICIES OF HIGH TAXES, AND EXCESSIVE REGULATIONS. AND ALSO THEIR POSTMODERN DREAM OF DISMANTLING THE INDUSTRIAL WEST.

DO NOT GUZZLE THEIR LIES ABOUT OIL. THEIR POLICIES WILL ONLY SQUELCH LIBERTY, CONSTRICT FREE MARKETS, AND DIMINISH ECONOMIC GROWTH.

No surprise here: Good policies can never arise from false premises. Which is why Leftism has always failed. Thank God.

In his speech, Olmert admitted that he is not popular as a Prime Minister, but blamed that fact on the media and on his opponents. Olmert singled out Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu for attack, saying that Netanyahu takes every opportunity to criticize him.

Oh, please, can it, Olmert. You're unpopular because you FAILED. In Lebanon, and even in the case of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. And if you're smart, you'll simply step down from office and make everyone happy.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to that attack and a chilling string of other terror plots during a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a transcript released Wednesday by the Pentagon.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Mohammed said in a statement read during the session, which was held last Saturday.

The transcripts also refer to a claim by Mohammed that he was tortured by the CIA, although he said he was not under duress at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo when he confessed to his role in the attacks.

In a section of the statement that was blacked out, he confessed to the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, The Associated Press has learned. Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on Islamic militancy. Mohammed has long been a suspect in the killing.

Using his own words, the extraordinary transcript connects Mohammed to dozens of the worst terror plots attempted or carried out in the last 15 years - and to others that have not occurred. All told, thousands have died in operations he directed.

His words draw al-Qaida closer to plots of the early 1990s than the group has previously been connected to, including the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing. Six people with links to global terror networks were convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison.

It also makes clear that al-Qaida wanted to down a second trans-Atlantic aircraft during would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid's operation.

Mohammed said he was involved in planning the 2002 bombing of a Kenya beach resort frequented by Israelis and the failed missile attack on an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa, Kenya. He also said he was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia. In 2002, 202 were killed when two Bali nightclubs were bombed.

He should receive the death sentence for what he did, or even tried to do. This is clearly one of the most vile, disgusting pieces of filth ever to walk the face of the earth.

Lieberman argues persuasively that an intellectual focus on ethnic cleansing, rather than nation-building, generates a dramatic shift in our understanding of contemporary history. Ethnic cleansing has repeatedly proved a necessary component of twentieth-century nation-building: "The story of the rise of the nation-state, a triumph of self-determination, becomes a story of tragedy for those who were driven out." Among his examples is the Palestinian exodus of 1948, and the creation of the State of Israel. Historians still argue vociferously over how many Palestinians were expelled, evacuated or simply fled in panic. Lieberman sidesteps this, arguing that their exodus was not unique. Quite the opposite, in fact: "The Arab departures from Israel seem mysterious only if viewed in isolation from all comparable examples. Ethnic war in other former Ottoman regions had displaced entire peoples, and ethnic war in Israel and Palestine had much the same effect, though this war left some Arabs in Israel."

He might also have mentioned that (1) an equal number of Jews were forcibly expelled from Arab countries - and that (2) the Arabs' ethnic cleansing of Jews was almost total, leaving only scattered handfuls of Jews left in the Middle East outside of Israel. But let's not dwell on that. Instead, pretend that the Palestinian narrative about their massive trauma at the hands of evil Jews was at least close to the truth. ven if that was true, it would still be totally absurd to have a population of over three million refugees.

There seems to be this weird idea in leftist rhetoric that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are mutually exclusive. Like you can't be both an anti-Zionist and an anti-Semite at the same time, so if you declare yourself to be an anti-Zionist then you get a pass on anti-Semitism (how convenient...) The result is predictable: UC Irvine Muslims hire speakers who hatefully spit out conspiracies about "Zionist Jews" who control the media, the banks, and the US government. But it's supposed to be OK, because they're talking about Zionist Jews, not all Jews. Except they're not - it's a nudge-nudge wink-wink that everyone gets, and when they say "Zionist Jew" they mean "Jew".

I think I may have missed something important in my initial take on the assault and attempted kidnapping of Elie Wiesel by a Holocaust denier. Are you familiar with this Feb. 1 incident? Don’t be surprised if you missed it; for some reason, this emblematic outrage has been largely ignored by the media... A later report claimed that the police delayed releasing details while they searched for the suspect. The only clue to the cretin’s identity in media reports at the time is from a pseudonymous Holocaust-denier posting on the Web site Ziopedia, which calls itself “anti-Zionist” but turns out to be a cyber-nexus for Holocaust denial.

There's a lot wrong there, but we just want to establish a very obvious,, very limited point: someone can be anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic at the same time. It's not as if this is a tough concept. And yet anti-Israel activists act as if they get a free pass when they smear Israelis with anti-Semitic accusations of well-poisoning, double-loyalty, etc - all because the Jews they happen to be talking about are also Israel.

The Palestinians are looking in the face of defeat. Here is a bit excerpted from the New York Times:

“It was always our choice to be fuel for the struggle,” he said. “But our problem now is that the car burns the youth as fuel but doesn’t move. There’s a problem in the engine, in the head. These kids are willing to be fuel, but many have been burned as waste.”

Mr. Zubeidi was a hero of the first intifada. “When I was younger I thought, ‘if I die, that’s natural, it’s for a cause,’ ” he said. “And today I think differently. To die? For what? For these people who can’t agree? That’s what this generation fears. It’s lost, and its sacrifices are meaningless. Is the Palestinian dream dying? In these circumstances, yes.”

Once a people lose hope their defeat is well on the way.

Arab Palestinians are no longer loyal to the idea of Palestine. They go through the motions, repeat the slogans, act as if they believed, but really it is over. The USSR was in a similar situation in 1980. By 1988 they had officialy declared defeat to the USA (with an exchange of Defence Ministers) and by '91 they were history.

One foreign leader who makes me stand up and cheer is John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia. In the last year, Howard has gained increased prominence for his willingness to stand up for a truth too few other leaders in the democratic West are willing to speak:

The truth is that people come to this country because they want to be Australians. The irony is that no institution or code lays down a test of Australianness. Such is the nature of our free society.

It would however be a crushing mistake to downplay the hopes and the expectations of our national family. We expect all who come here to make an overriding commitment to Australia, its laws and its democratic values. We expect them to master the common language of English and we will help them to do so.

When leaders lead with courage, others are inspired. Howard's Treasurer, Peter Csotello when one step further, and told immigrants who want to bring sharia law to Australia that they should move to a country where they will be more comfortable. Howard backed him up!

FIVE of the nation's most powerful Islamic clerics, including Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilali, have been banned from talking to the media by Muslim leaders for delivering "anti-Australian" messages.

Australia's Lebanese Muslim Association (the largest group of Muslim immigrants to Australia are the Lebanese) is concerned that comments to the effect that women who dress immodestly deserve to be raped harm them.

LMA president Tom Zreika yesterday told The Australian the letter was issued to end the "perceived un-Australian viewpoints given by some clerics".

"One of the big issues is the double-speak by the various imams," Mr Zreika said.

He added that the messages some clerics delivered in Arabic contradicted comments given in English while talking to the mainstream media.

"They go on to the Voice of Islam and talk about something which really isn't in accordance with our views as Australians.

"(While) most of our clerics are selected on the basis that they have Australian values and Australian characteristics ... some of them haven't (lived) up to that."

Once upon a time, a negative comment of some kind had to be aimed at a minority group to be called "hate speech" but that is of course rather narrow. There are lots of people and things that get hated for all sorts of reasons. And the community may be adopting the wider meaning that has always been possible -- as we see in a recent dispute among an apparently all-black group:

A black local councillor in Milwaukee, Mike McGee, is being subjected to a recall election and he is not taking it kindly. He said on radio that one of his political opponents, Leon Todd, should be "hung" for betraying the community. He also gave out his opponent's phone no. on radio and urged listeners to call it.

Thuggish behavior, but is it not just a dispute between two individuals? Apparently not. Todd got a court order against the thug (no wonder he is being recalled!) and commented afterwards: "It's really a shame that we have reached this level. But when it comes to hate speech -- hate speech is not free speech, and we cross the line"

It seems that negative speech of all kinds is on the verge of being criminalized. And note also that the myth of hate speech not being free speech is invoked as if it were beyond question. That myth originates in nothing more than Leftist chants but it has gained an alarming amount of ground.

With separate parliaments recently established in Scotland and Wales and a separate English parliament under discussion, Britain is the disunited kingdom. Part of the reason for that is that Brits look down on one-another at a great rate -- for reasons of social class and according to where they live -- both of which are usually indexed by accent. Anybody who lives North of Watford, for instance, is regarded as a semi-barbarian by most of those who live in the South-East. And to most of the English, the Scots are simply hilarious! And the Welsh are good only for singing, of course. G.B. Shaw (who was an Irishman) summed it up well with his famous saying that: "No Englishman can open his mouth without causing another Englishman to despise him".

Such unhappy people do, of course, also sometimes take it out on people from overseas and Australians are often recipients of some such animus. On the whole, however, Australians are much better accepted in Britain than are other Englishmen! I once had an upper-class girlfriend in London, for instance, who was quite ready to marry me but who would NEVER have married a Cockney (working-class Londoner)!

Most Australians, however, are unaware of that context. They do not realize how generally prejudiced the English tend to be about other groups and get more offended than they should be when some ignorant English twit mouths off about Australians. Australians fail to realize that the same English twit will despise other Englishmen even more. Hence the outraged reply in the Australian mainstream media to a recent example of such twittery. The twit concerned certainly did make some extraordinary and ill-founded generalizations. Excerpt:

the Land Down Under is not populated by the hearty, the gregarious and the welcoming, but by white trash (I don't particularly like that phrase because no-one has the courage to use its equivalent, `black trash', but you get the point). Australians are some of the most coarse, racist people on earth, as Kath & Kim rightly portrays. For example, an American girl who seeks courtship will tentatively ask you for a meal and weeks of getting to know you; an Australian girl will come up to you at the Walkabout bar in London's densely Aussie-populated Shepherds Bush and inquire `Would you like a f*ck?'

What the author, Patrick West, failed to explain is that the English have always migrated to Australia in droves and that over a million British-born people live in Australia to this day (over 5% of the Australian population). That is called "voting with your feet". Migrating to another country is a big move. People don't do it unless the new country is a lot more attractive to them than the one they left. So the judgment of English people who know Australia well is very favourable. But I guess that the English too must be white trash and some of the most coarse, racist people on earth.

As Mr West observes, there are also many Australians (106,000) who have moved to Britain for work opportunities but they are nowhere nearly as many as those who have gone the other way.

It seems highly likely that Mr West's diatribe could fall foul of Britain's Draconian hate-speech laws. The publication in which the diatribe appeared is "Spiked" -- a generally libertarian British publication -- so I would regret it if "Spiked" went the way of its predecessor publication -- LM -- which had to close down as the result of a lawsuit. Given the British legal environment, I think that the editor would be wise to withdraw the article promptly and substitute an apology for it.

Update:

Perhaps I should mention that I have written some rather scornful things about Britain. I have just re-read them and am rather pleased about how well they stand up -- even though they were written nearly 30 years ago.

Update 2:

There is a rejoinder to the West article here. And there is a contrasting British view of Australia here. The contrasting view is based on an actual visit to Australia -- unlike Mr West's puerile outpouring.